American Employees Reinvent the Sick Day (msn.com) 314
The bar for taking a sick day is getting lower, and some bosses say that's a problem. From a report: U.S. workers have long viewed an unwillingness to take sick days as a badge of honor. That's a laurel workers care much less about these days. The number of sick days Americans take annually has soared since the pandemic, employee payroll data show. Covid-19 and a rise in illnesses such as RSV, which can require days away from work, are one reason. Managers and human-resources executives also attribute the jump to a bigger shift in the way many Americans relate to their jobs.
For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health. And unlike older workers, who might have been loath to call in sick for fear of seeming weak or unreliable, younger workers feel more entitled to take full advantage of the benefits they've been given, executives and recruiters say. That confidence has only grown as record low unemployment persists. So far this year, 30% of white-collar workers with access to paid leave have taken sick time, up from 21% in 2019, according to data from payroll and benefits software company Gusto. Employees between ages 25 and 34 are taking sick days most often, with their use rates jumping 45% from before the pandemic.
[...] Younger workers used to follow the example of their older peers and come in even when under the weather, says Crystal Williams, chief human resources officer at global business payments company Fleetcor, which has around 5,000 U.S. employees. She suspects early-career employees aren't taking cues from older co-workers in the same way now that five days a week at the office is no longer the norm. Prepandemic, Fleetcor workers in their 20s and 30s took one or two sick days a year, she says. Now, it's more like three to five.
For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health. And unlike older workers, who might have been loath to call in sick for fear of seeming weak or unreliable, younger workers feel more entitled to take full advantage of the benefits they've been given, executives and recruiters say. That confidence has only grown as record low unemployment persists. So far this year, 30% of white-collar workers with access to paid leave have taken sick time, up from 21% in 2019, according to data from payroll and benefits software company Gusto. Employees between ages 25 and 34 are taking sick days most often, with their use rates jumping 45% from before the pandemic.
[...] Younger workers used to follow the example of their older peers and come in even when under the weather, says Crystal Williams, chief human resources officer at global business payments company Fleetcor, which has around 5,000 U.S. employees. She suspects early-career employees aren't taking cues from older co-workers in the same way now that five days a week at the office is no longer the norm. Prepandemic, Fleetcor workers in their 20s and 30s took one or two sick days a year, she says. Now, it's more like three to five.
PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
I get a certain number of PDOs (Paid Days Off).
Whether I want to take them as vacation days or sick days is up to me.
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems weird to me that you need to use your vacation days if you are too ill to go to work.
Re:PDOs (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not "vacation" days. They're paid time off days. What you do with them, why you take them and how you use them is entirely up to you. If you want to take them all for vacation, up to you. If you want to save them up for any emergency that comes along, up to you. If you want to donate them to a coworker, up to you (although not all employers allow this).
And alternative is to just offer no paid time off. If you want a day off, take it, unpaid. That works too. It's arguably even more reasonable. Just give people cash. Let them decide to use it - pay their rent, cover not getting paid for a day off, whatever.
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasonable alternative is what the rest of the world does: offer vacation AND sick days. Not everything in life needs to be a gamble.
But you do you.
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The reasonable alternative is what the rest of the world does: offer vacation AND sick days. Not everything in life needs to be a gamble.
What difference does it make if an employer offers (15 Paid Days Off) or (10 Vacation Days and 5 Sick Days)? They're both 15 days off for which you get paid. The only difference I've noticed in the latter case is that employers often require a doctor's note when using "Sick Days" (usually if you're out several consecutive days) and requiring pre-approval (or pre-scheduling) for "Vacation Days". Lumping them all together to use as you wish, no explanation/justification needed seems simpler and better for
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Informative)
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In Australia the difference is that your four weeks annual leave is part of your entitlement that you've worked towards.
The company always owes you that money.
So if you work ten years and never take annual (non sick) leave, then when you leave the company owes you 40 weeks pay.
Sick leave isn't paid out like that. It does usually accrue (probably to prevent people suddenly all getting "sick" at the end of the financial year each year), but it doesn't get paid out when you leave.
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In the USA, it's not uncommon for both vacation and sick days to be paid out when you leave.
My grandma had like 400 days of sick pay built up when she retired after 40+ years so she kept getting
a paycheck for over a year after she retired.
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a distinct problem with hourly workers, especially low paid ones. They will continue to go to work while still coughing and sneezing even if it's to serve food out the window at McDonald's. Getting accrued sick days is a distinct benefit, and helps keep the workers and neighbors more healthy at the same time. Even better if it's just granted by law, as in some countries, not needing to be accrued or up to the bosses to be generous.
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For longer, contiguous days sick, most companies have (sometimes optional, but inexpensive) short-term disability and long-term disability to use is you're out longer and longer, with a doctor's note.
And FMLA requires up to 12 weeks of (unpaid) leave for serious medical issues for the employee or a family member, while maintaining health benefits, and a guarantee of being able to return to the same or a similar job.
The situation could be better in the US, but it's not as bad as the US haters always claim.
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
What difference does it make if an employer offers (15 Paid Days Off) or (10 Vacation Days and 5 Sick Days)?
Because it causes people to go into work sick so they don't use up the precious vacation days that they need for a trip to Disneyland they have promised to the kids, that trip to Grandma etc.
Re:PDOs (Score:4, Insightful)
What difference does it make if an employer offers (15 Paid Days Off) or (10 Vacation Days and 5 Sick Days)? They're both 15 days off for which you get paid.
If I only have 15 PTO days to use, I'm going to come into work sick and get all my coworkers sick, suffer through the symptoms and lack of productivity just to ensure I can still take a full vacation.
If I have dedicated sick days, Im not coming into the office if I have so much as a sniffle. Why should I? Im not hurting myself and limited the fun days off I want to take when I can take sick time.
PTO is a way for the employers to screw the employees out of real time off. It used to be common to have a policy like 15 vacation days and 10 sick days per year, now its all combined PTO, which you cannot carry over to the next year (in most states) - use it or lose it.
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We used to have sick and vacation days, but a few years ago, everything converted to PTO. There was a one-time conversion of something like 3:1 sick to PTO and 1:1 vacation to PTO.
There are good and bad things about both systems.
The nice thing about sick days was that no explicit pre-approval needed to take place, whereas, vacation needed to be pre-approved.
Now, with only PTO.... it's a bit of a gray area.
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I did find once my employers started having "take as many days as you like, nothing is accured or on the balance books" that I started taking _less_ vacation. HR wasn't bugging me at the end of the year to use it or lose it. Because taking two weeks off in June usually just means that I'm 4 weeks behind when I come back :-) It would also make me a bit more stressed, as I'd always wait for that gap between urgent projects to take some time off, but that gap never actually appears.
I'm making up for it now
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Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasonable alternative is what the rest of the world does: offer vacation AND sick days.
I'm in America, and I have both vacation days and sick days.
This used to be the norm in the US; but a lot of companies got the bright idea of cutting back on people's total leave by combining the two types of absences - while pretending it was a "benefit" because you could theoretically use that leave for anything you wanted. However I note that, with every company I'm aware of, the conversion significantly pared down both the overall amount of leave and the rate of accrual.
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Informative)
You seriously call that reasonable? Where I live, I get 30 vacation days and whatever amount of sick days I need.
Re:PDOs (Score:4)
Where I live I can get unused vacation days as extra pay when I leave. So instead of taking vacations I just work all the time and hope that I find a new job quickly the next time there are layoffs. Since there is no such thing as a severance package or even a notice. You can be handed a box for your things one morning and escorted out by security before lunch with nothing but your final paycheck in your hand.
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Where I live vacation days expire after 24 months and you get reprimanded for not using them. I know it may seem weird to live in a country that recognises the mental health issues that result from overworking but hey we suffer dearly for it by by being happy instead. God I wish I could be more of a slave. /s
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You seriously call that reasonable? Where I live, I get 30 vacation days and whatever amount of sick days I need.
I'm trying to work out what American 'employees' actually are. It isn't quite slavery because they aren't exactly chattels or property of anyone (except perhaps the state). It isn't serfdom, because they aren't tied to land or anything. But they aren't really 'free' either. I mean, the USA talks up 'freedom' a lot but it seems to be all talk when it comes down to workers rights, healthcare etc.
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You have the right to leave at any time for any reason or no reason, with or without notice.
That sure doesn't sound like slavery to me.
Re:PDOs (Score:4, Insightful)
But not exactly freedom either. They have the right to make you leave any time for no reason at all too...
As an American, I don't understand the other way.
In America, you can get fired at any time for any reason but you generally get paid for an additional length of time, get severance pay, or get unemployment (paid by the government but funded by the employer)
How does it work if the employer can't fire the employee or the employee can't quit at will? This is such a bizarre concept to me. It's like saying someone can't get a divorce. Why would an employee even want to show up to some place where they are no longer welcome? Many places, for security reasons, when they fire you, they also escort you to the door so you can't steal, sabotage, etc.. I can't imagine not being able to fire someone at will. I can see having to pay them for an additional period of time (which we also have in the USA) but I can't imagine being required to allow them to continue working.
Well, where I live, you can't just 'get a divorce'. You have to go through a few years, I think its 4, of 'separation' before you get the marriage annuled. Even if you have an extremely abusive spouse.
What I can't understand is how America has the worst life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality etc, outside of the third world.
I think it all goes together.
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And alternative is to just offer no paid time off. If you want a day off, take it, unpaid. That works too. It's arguably even more reasonable.
Yeah, try that "We don't offer PTO" approach in this labor market and let me know how it works out for you, lol
The free market works both ways in American employment law. Some of my favorite professional moments were quitting shitty jobs with zero notice, watching the freakout, and responding to, "You can't do this!" with "Actually, I can, at will employment [wikipedia.org] goes both ways. Good luck!"
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why you get people coming in to work while they're sick. If somebody has a limited number of days off then they're not going to want to waste them when they're not feeling well enough to go do something fun. If they're sick they might as well go into the office and be miserable rather than stay home and be miserable if it means they save a paid day off to do something fun when they're feeling better.
Fortunately for me, my company has sick days that don't come out of your vacation time. And if you're feeling well enough to work but think you may be contagious then obviously you work from home. People I work with are generally very sympathetic when you're on a conference call and you say you're not feeling well or apologize for muting during a coughing or sneezing fit.
Re:PDOs (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why you get people coming in to work while they're sick. If somebody has a limited number of days off then they're not going to want to waste them when they're not feeling well enough to go do something fun. If they're sick they might as well go into the office and be miserable rather than stay home and be miserable if it means they save a paid day off to do something fun when they're feeling better.
Agreed. I mean, if they give a *very* generous number of days off — say 50 days off per year that can be used for either illness or vacation — then fine, but in practice, that never happens. Rather, they typically give a few more days than other companies give for vacation (at most), expecting that illness will cut into your vacation time, and you'll work more days than you do at other companies that treat vacation and sick leave as separate things.
IMO, if working from home isn't an option, then the correct way to handle companies like that is either A. don't work there or B. treat days off as vacation, and come in sick no matter how sick you are. After the entire company gets simultaneously sick with influenza or COVID a few times, they'll realize why taking away vacation days for things that employees can't control is a mistake. Or they won't, and everybody will get fed up and find other jobs. Either way, problem solved. :-)
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My company uses PTO, and it is my personal preference. We do offer essentially unlimited sick time as well, but it is done on a case by case basis to manage abuse. It just takes one person abusing the system to destroy it unfortunately.
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but it is done on a case by case basis to manage abuse
That's setting yourselves up for a lawsuit if employees are getting differing treatment and are smart enough to figure it out amongst themselves.
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This is exactly why you get people coming in to work while they're sick. If somebody has a limited number of days off then they're not going to want to waste them when they're not feeling well enough to go do something fun. If they're sick they might as well go into the office and be miserable rather than stay home and be miserable if it means they save a paid day off to do something fun when they're feeling better.
Agreed. I mean, if they give a *very* generous number of days off — say 50 days off per year that can be used for either illness or vacation — then fine, but in practice, that never happens. Rather, they typically give a few more days than other companies give for vacation (at most), expecting that illness will cut into your vacation time, and you'll work more days than you do at other companies that treat vacation and sick leave as separate things.
IMO, if working from home isn't an option, then the correct way to handle companies like that is either A. don't work there or B. treat days off as vacation, and come in sick no matter how sick you are. After the entire company gets simultaneously sick with influenza or COVID a few times, they'll realize why taking away vacation days for things that employees can't control is a mistake. Or they won't, and everybody will get fed up and find other jobs. Either way, problem solved. :-)
Lots of PTO but if you don't make your (very onerous quota) at best you won't get a raise or bonus, at worse they'll just... 'let you go'.
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This is exactly why you get people coming in to work while they're sick. If somebody has a limited number of days off then they're not going to want to waste them when they're not feeling well enough to go do something fun. If they're sick they might as well go into the office and be miserable rather than stay home and be miserable if it means they save a paid day off to do something fun when they're feeling better.
Fortunately for me, my company has sick days that don't come out of your vacation time. And if you're feeling well enough to work but think you may be contagious then obviously you work from home. People I work with are generally very sympathetic when you're on a conference call and you say you're not feeling well or apologize for muting during a coughing or sneezing fit.
If I was treated like an American employee I'd make a point of coming into the office when I'm infectious and making sure I walked around the whole company making people sick. That'd reduce overall productivity and, perhaps, when they look at the bottom line, they might realise that encouraging people not to come to work sick might just be a good idea.
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They're not "vacation" days. They're paid time off days. What you do with them, why you take them and how you use them is entirely up to you.
So use them all for vacation and just go to work when you are sick, to get your coworkers sick too. Then they can decide how to best use their paid days off as well.
When I worked in the office I used to hate when people came in sick. I'm guessing encouraging sick people to come into the office is probably a bigger productivity hit to a business than any loss from WFH.
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In 3 months you would have accrued 20 hours of PTO. For some places you can exchange PTO at 3x for sick days, so you'd have up to 7.5 days for sick leave in your scenario. For places that don't treat sick leave differently, you'd have only 2.5 days. And if you need to exceed that you'd have to make arrangements with your employer. Some employers are incredibly stupid and don't adapt to situations outside of their policies. Which means you be subject to disciplinary measures potentially including termination
Free Time (Score:2)
My company has the same policy. You get a set number of days off at the begining of the year (I think it's 10) then accrue more time as vacation time after that. The first ten days are sick days, and you can use any additional days off as sick days or vacation days - however you want. You can keep your banked time as long as you want.
If you don't get sick, you get extra vacation days to use. If you are sick for a while and run out, they'll usually give you more time off, or let you pull from future accrued
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They want people taking vacation.
I hate to be the cynical type, but I have a feeling it's more to do with their potential financial liability than it has anything to do with employee wellness. In the states that I've worked (no clue if this is a federal law) vacation time or PTO is part of your compensation package, and must be paid out when you leave. "Sick time" is not considered part of it, so it just vanishes when you quit.
The last company I worked for had too many of their higher-ups, the ones that had been there for 30 years and n
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I hate to be the cynical type, but I have a feeling it's more to do with their potential financial liability than it has anything to do with employee wellness. In the states that I've worked (no clue if this is a federal law) vacation time or PTO is part of your compensation package, and must be paid out when you leave. "Sick time" is not considered part of it, so it just vanishes when you quit.
Where I work (public sector), sick days accrue, but are not paid out when you leave. Whether you treat them like Mod Points (use em or lose em) or as insurance against a major accident or illness is up to you.
And we are required to use our vacation time every year. If you don't do so you will be forced to take it at the end of the fiscal year (with some exceptions) as the accountant types consider carry over fiscally inconvenient.
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after paying your deductible and copay you won't have enough money to go on vacation, so it all kind of works out.
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Thats the USA for you. Slaves
Re:PDOs (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can just as easily argue that companies wouldn't offer "vacation" and "sick" days if it wasn't in their favor.
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You can just as easily argue that companies wouldn't offer "vacation" and "sick" days if it wasn't in their favor.
Only insofar as it results in employees being more likely to stay at the company. It isn't financially in their favor except indirectly, in the form of not having to spend as much money recruiting people.
in the EU Maternity and paternity leave is mandate (Score:3)
in the EU Maternity and paternity leave is mandated
Re:in the EU Maternity and paternity leave is mand (Score:4, Informative)
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Uh, I get 29 paid days off plus up to 6 weeks for each sickness. If I am still sick after those 6 weeks, my health insurance steps in and continues to pay my salary.
My employer is allowed to request a medical certificate on the first day of my sickness, but my contract says I don't need to provide one before the third day.
The medical certificate will not disclose what I am suffering from. It will only attest that I am currently unable to work.
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The medical certificate will not disclose what I am suffering from. It will only attest that I am currently unable to work.
Not sure how it works in your country but it's similar in the US, employer can ask for a sick note from your provider, but medical privacy means they can't disclose details. Smart employers don't ask for one for exactly this reason, it's fucking useless, I can get a sick note just by calling my Doctor and telling him I'm burned out and need a few days off. Every healthcare provider I've ever had was willing to write these notes with minimal justification. I even once got one from the Dentist after a cl
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A bit inaccurate:
My health insurance gives money to my employer from the day I present the medical certificate up to 6 weeks and my employer continues to pay my normal salary. After 6 weeks my employer will stop paying (but most likely won't fire me) and my health insurance will take over and pay 70% of my normal salary (before taxes).
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As it should be. I used to take protest "mental health days" at an employer that kept them separate.
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I get a certain number of PDOs (Paid Days Off).
Whether I want to take them as vacation days or sick days is up to me.
That is, of course, a very broken system. It motivates you to go into the office when sick, with low productivity, infecting your colleagues, and slowing recovery. In many other countries, sick means sick. You stay home and still get paid - by the company for a reasonable time, after that by the social security system. And, of course, you go see a doctor - also (mostly) free. And before anyone yammers about "it's not free, its paid by taxpayers": It's still an economic net benefit - fewer sick people, faste
Well, here's a good reason to not use them (Score:3)
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This is a good point.
My library used to allow unlimited sick days to accrue in your "account". People would only use them if they were literally so sick they couldn't walk! And when they retired, we have some people with 6+ months of sick time built up. Which we then had to pay out in a lump sum, often wrecking havoc with out budgets, especially if we didn't know it was coming!
Then, a few years back, we changed the policy to limit the sick time to 30 days max (6 weeks). If you built up more than that, i
If you are sick, for christ sake stay home (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: If you are sick, for christ sake stay home (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in the USA. In europe holidays and sick days are totally seperate. You dont get "allocated" sick leave , if you're sick you take a day off and get sick pay. The US system is Victorian if you ask me.
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Thank you for giving me another good reason to insist on being allowed to work from home full time.
Since people feel obligated to come in sick and spread disease, I have justification to work from home and not get said disease.
Re:If you are sick, for christ sake stay home (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor management of paid time off is the employee's fault, full stop. There isn't anything stopping an employee from taking a "sick" day and then not having any sick days left when needed.
Disagree on both points. COVID can take someone out for two weeks or more if it is severe enough, and more than one week just to get past the point of being contagious. Asking people to keep two weeks of extra vacation banked just in case they get sick isn't reasonable, particularly when that's more than some new employees accrue in an entire year. Refusing to do so isn't poor management of paid time off. It's standing up for your right to have reasonable time off. And to the extent that this harms the company or harms other employees because of people coming in to work while massively contagious, that's the company's fault, full stop.
And the same is true even in the context of employees taking a sick day when just not feeling well, and then being hit with something catastrophic that takes them out for a couple of weeks. Because if they didn't take those previous sick days, a bunch of people in the office might have gotten sick from them on those previous occasions, and you can't really be sure whether that runny nose could turn into a hospital stay on a ventilator for some unlucky coworker, or worse.
The entire notion that you should have a set number of sick days is prima facie sociopathic, and has no place in modern society. If you're sick, f**king stay home. Period. Full stop. If that means employers have problems because of employees taking too many sick days, then that is absolute undeniable proof that those businesses are understaffed. And if businesses can't afford to pay more people, that means they're not charging enough and need to raise prices. There's really no wiggle room on any of these points.
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Disagree on both points.
You can disagree, but you're objectively wrong. It does not matter, at all. If you have a fixed number of vacation days, and a fixed number of sick days, there is a fixed total between the two. If you are instead given a fixed number of days equal to that total, you're no better/worse off. It's just math.
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The entire notion that you should have a set number of sick days is prima facie sociopathic, and has no place in modern society. If you're sick, f**king stay home. Period. Full stop.
Sorry, I didn't call this out in my first reply. This point doesn't matter when the reality in the US is that sick days usually are a fixed commodity, if you even get them as a separate pool.
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Often management of paid time off is out of the hands of the employees, with lots of coercion to take or not take it, and often carry over balances are capped quite low.
A while back (early 2000's) I worked at a defense sub-contractor owned by Tyco Electronics that would try and get all its PTO obligations zeroed out at the end of each fiscal year to make the accounting look good. Managers would hound you to make sure you got your balance down to near zero, and even post a list of balances outside their cub
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Only in the US do are they hard-ass about sick days.
I've had employers be very flexible about sick days. Perhaps you caught a nasty cold early on in the year and used up 5 sick days rather than
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If you have a combined total of 14 days, it doesn't matter how you split it on paper.
If you have a combined total of 14 days, in this labor market, the only paper you should be working with is your CV.
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Re:If you are sick, for christ sake stay home (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want what you have. If you are sick stay home. This should have been obvious pre-covid, but now? Seriously, if you have any symptoms then don't come to work. If you are at the office, or on the train, or wherever, and you are coughing and sneezing, I'm not going to be thinking wow, what a dedicated person... I'm going to think what a jerk.
One nice thing about the flexibility my company offers for WFH vs office, is if you want to work while you are sick, you can say that you're going to be WFH to protect your coworkers until your symptoms subside, and everyone is happy with it. If you don't want to work while sick, you can still use your PTO and actually take the day off- but that middle case where you're functional but sick enough to infect others no longer leads to everyone else getting sick too.
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... If you are sick stay home. ...
Oh, believe me, I'd love to! Thing is, like many people, I don't actually have the luxury of a separate "sick leave" pool of hours... my employer (and every one of my previous employers since the '90s or so) has opted to make vacation and sick leave both part of a single pool, called PTO (Paid Time Off). And these days, I also have a family, multiple kids and all that comes with that. Even with a stay-at-home wife, that means that there are times when I absolutely have to take time off for things other tha
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I don't want what you have. If you are sick stay home.
Yeah, very few things chafe my hide as much as people who come to work sick.
If I'm sick but feeling well enough to work, I email my supervisor and give him the choice - I can take a sick day or I can work from home. It's honestly fine either way, but if he wants me to use a sick day I will not be responding to any problems from work.
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If you are at the office, or on the train, or wherever, and you are coughing and sneezing, I'm not going to be thinking wow, what a dedicated person... I'm going to think what a jerk.
Then be thankful that you don't get migraines you have to call in for and cases of the sniffles that you don't.
In an ideal world, everyone could call out for every day they're feeling under the weather and still keep their bills paid. We don't live in that world. As the saying goes: Don't hate the player, hate the game.
What a horrible article (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think more than anything and it's something the article seems to gloss over is that with COVID and other really nasty extremely contagious things still lingering around then everyone who has even the slightest symptom of ANYTHING should stay the hell away from everyone else.
I caught COVID from someone who had extremely minor to almost no symptoms and we were OUTSIDE!
It's not worth it, stay home.
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Agree, horrible. The companies are the one that come across as entitled with attitudes like this
"... younger workers feel more entitled to take full advantage of the benefits they've been given, executives and recruiters say."
Excuse me, but the benefits are earned, not given.
irrelevant to those of who have combined leave (Score:2)
Many employers don't give out sick leave but have combined leave.
If you just have PTO (Paid time off) would YOU want to call in sick and burn time you'd use as vacation?
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Re:irrelevant to those of who have combined leave (Score:5, Insightful)
Lucky me (Score:2)
I have "unlimited" sick days, with which comes the understanding that you don't take them unless you're actually sick.
I hardly ever take them unless I'm actually too sick to work, have surgery, etc. which is rare. If I just have a cold or something I work anyway, because I'd just be bored otherwise (though I probably don't work as intently). And from home, of course.
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If I just have a cold or something I work anyway
and from home, of course.
Thank god you said "From Home". I absolutely despise it when sick people come to the office and infect everyone else.
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I have "unlimited" sick days, with which comes the understanding that you don't take them unless you're actually sick.
The last time I had a job with separate sick time I used it up interviewing for a better job, lol, since they'd pay out vacation on separation but not sick time.
Don't hate the player, hate the game, lol
The times are a-changing (Score:5, Insightful)
1. COVID-19 taught the general public that showing up to work when sick is *not* a badge of honor, it's a dunce cap. It might look good to upper management if your boss is an uneducated buffoon, but the company benefits more if one employee spends three days at home rather than 20 employees working at 50% capacity for one week. Believe it or not, when you are sick you rarely perform at optimal level, and when you infect your co-workers that is not a team play.
2. The badge of honor was a sign you cared about the company. This made sense 40 years ago when the company allegedly cared about you; when promotions were an in-house affair and wages increased commensurately to time served and position. Nowadays companies care not about their employees - they care only about the bottom line. Caring about the company when the company does not care about you is not a badge of honor, it's the dunce cap all over again. Take what you can from your company and give as little as you can back, and rest assured your company is trying to do the same to you. Switch jobs often if you want the highest salary, and do not expect anything from your company that you don't have in signed writing.
3. America is very slowly changing. The American dream is losing its adherents, and the almighty dollar isn't as shiny as it once was. The younger generations no longer see money as the one and only goal of life. Success is no longer measured solely in the girth of your wallet. That's probably a good thing though it will reduce the sway America has on world politics.
There are probably a thousand other reasons too.
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There were many companies who either refused to let people take off if they were sick from covid, or berated them for taking time off to have "the flu", or told them they had to be in the office [cnn.com] regardless.
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Not every illness is contagious in an office environment, though. Certainly not waterborne illnesses. You pretty much have to drink after the infected or lick their toilet clean (eww) to get whatever they've got. I've seen plenty of instances of people showing up to work sick where nobody else really got sick from them (and then a few instances where a guy shows up sick and it spread to others. Curiously it always seem to be the same small number of people that get other people sick).
For a lot of employ
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Not every illness is contagious in an office environment, though. Certainly not waterborne illnesses.
Cuz that's when I want to be stuck in the office, when I'm shitting myself every 15 minutes, lol, because the only thing that makes that experience better is cheap ass commercial grade toilet paper.
More like... (Score:5, Insightful)
American Employees drag themselves into the 20th century.
Nothing like being behind the rest of the civilized world when it comes to staying home sick. I've worked at my current employer for nearly 30 years now and we've always been told to stay home when sick as well as encouraged to take mental health days. And our sick days are separate from our vacation days.
If you're sick or tired or just not there mentally going into the office and sitting at your desk like a zombie isn't productive so why not just stay home and get better?
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The underlying assumption is that you are a slave trying to avoid work. If the overseer can't see you, you're probably off having fun instead of recovering from an infection.
They'd rather have a cold do the rounds in the office and take a huge productivity hit that risk one person getting away with slacking. Even if that person is otherwise trusted, it's always assume that's only while they're observed.
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Sick? I get it. Tired? Always. I would never go into work. Just not mentally there that is just so vague most people could justify never going to work.
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You seem tired.
They can make the days up (Score:2)
Or....just hear me out.... (Score:3, Funny)
"Managers and human-resources executives also attribute the jump to a bigger shift in the way many Americans relate to their jobs." ....or....just hear me out....
Could it be wages that don't keep up with inflation over DECADES? And now blazing levels of inflation (no matter how many government wonks *insist* 'this is fine'.)
Layoffs leaving the 'lucky few' still with jobs doing 140% of the work?
How about "we offer unlimited vacation, just ask for what you need" complete nonsense? Hint: nobody buys it, you morons.
Or could it be a hiring process that has been depersonalized to the point of "video your answers to these 10 questions, email to us, and we'll get back to you" bullshittery? To say nothing of the "we don't bother hiring, we just draft 20 temps and then keep 1 or 2 from each class" galley slave approach?
To top it off, I'd even add the whole "open office nobody needs their own actual desk" cherry on top of utter depersonalization which covid interrupted...but didn't kill.
And you wonder why people have a different 'way of relating to their job'? Are you kidding?
At heart, I am an ardent, I daresay militant free-marketeer. I run my own small business with 7 people, maybe $5-8 mill in sales a year. I'm largely libertarian. I'm generally anti-union. I think Road to Serfdom is brilliant. ...but the really, really, REALLY shit way larger companies across this country are treating employees is turning me nearly into a Gramscian, ready to throw some molotovs and storm a barricade.
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It's a matter of respect.
My grandfather worked from age 14 to retirement in the same company. There was no familiarity between management and worker. My grandpa was always "Herr (myname)" to his boss and the boss was always "Herr Direktor" to my grandpa, from the first to the last day. Actually, Herr Direktor eventually retired and his son became Herr Direktor, but nothing else changed. There was no "we are all the same" and "flat hierarchies" bullshit.
But there was respect. Mutual respect.
Herr Direktor kne
Impact of "Paid Time Off"? (Score:2)
Around 2020, most employers started going to a "paid time off" model.
I personally haven't had "sick" leave since before 2018. It was all just one bucket of "take it or don't". It was a total part of compensation and when I'd quit, I'd get paid out the sum as hourly, annualized. Apparently, more businesses are doing this because otherwise the accounting when an employee leaves is more difficult.
Anyway, this crap article was probably written by some drone in HR. It's a part of my compensation. Get fucked, I'l
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I actually this model.
I think PTO you just use is very reasonable. No questions asked.
Then if you are actually sick for any reasonable amount of time, they have Short and Long term disability.
It's way simpler.
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I've worked at a couple places with "unlimited" time off, no distinction for sick/vacation... and the honest truth is that almost everyone is less likely to use it (at least for vacation), in my experience.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it's also a huge pain in the ass for the company to do accounting for... so it's become less common.
Now these same companies have people taking more vacation because there's a quantifiable amount of time off people can take, and it feels like it's in short supply and
I worked at restaurants back in the day (Score:5, Insightful)
Call centers were the worst. It's basically impossible to take time off, so unless you're vomiting so much the callers can hear you show up. That's what the little trash bucket by the cubicle is for anyway.
Meanwhile we keep getting new COVID variants.
TLDR:Younger workers are tired of being exploited (Score:5, Insightful)
The younger generation has decided they are tired of being exploited. We are seeing this in union activity as well as every other facet of life.
I don't blame them. I myself have lived for work for quite a while. Others I know have broken down their bodies over time to make things work. This younger generation grew up with parents working to the bone and getting little in return. An example is the AI who chose to write this article instead of someone who knows how to proofread. I might have been loath to call in sick too.
This younger generation isn't disappointing me. They are who we need.
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We have increased productivity per worker by 200% to 1000% in the past 50 years. With the worker actually receiving ZERO (at best) of that increased productivity. All we got was now doing the work that was formerly done by 2-10 people per person.
So don't you worry. We can provide quality work with people not allowing themselves to be worked to death. We have the productivity buffer for that. If everything fails, rehire the 2-10 people you fired because you could exploit the remaining worker better.
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
Couple of reasons for this... (Score:2)
1) Unlike PTO, if you leave a company you will not get paid out for any unused Sick time. Use it or lose it.
2) In the past, many companies would allow you to roll over sick time from year to year. Policies are shifting to a yearly restart of sick time. Contrast that with PTO policies, where many companies will allow you to roll over unused portions to the next year up to a stated limit.
3) Doctor notes. Most places don't require one unless you are sick for 3 consecutive days. So if you just need a random day
And so on (Score:2)
"Do fuck all. Your boss not care about you...", etc.
I took no sick leave last year (Score:2)
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I've had to explain to a boss the way I would to a four year old that I don't work for a living just so I can spend all of my time at work.
I told a small business owner once who questioned my commitment that I'd come in as early (5AM) and leave as late (7PM) as him the day he gave me an equity stake and the same high six digit salary he paid himself. He didn't like that answer.
Later he fired me for discussing wages with my co-workers and was stupid enough to put that down in writing (e-mail) as the reason for my termination. Got myself a nice 18 month severance for that, after my lawyer explained to him the way he would to a four year that